Waking up tired - Not your T*oken

On Friday, July 22nd, an article in Inside Higher Ed highlighted some of the responses from campus administrators “after a tense summer nationally.” While perhaps some of these responses held nuance and complexity, the theme the article focused on was administrators’ “call for a peaceful start to the academic year.” Maybe as a result of attending one too many* anti-war protests, whenever I hear the word ‘peace’ I have a tendency to ask, but what about justice?

I work and write in a field that I entered because I sincerely believed it to be the gateway towards social justice for all living things. Needless to say (or perhaps not so needless for some), I was more than a bit naive. Higher education, whether institutionally, culturally, or societally, is as much an arbiter of oppression and injustice as any other social enterprise. That is not to say that I do not believe in the liberatory power and potential of education - in fact it is that very belief that keeps me in the discipline, striving towards becoming faculty myself one day. However, I am far more critical of education these days, more skeptical of intent and purpose, more aware of its harm and dangers, where before I took the benefits of all education as a given.

About that asterisk: This website uses the asterisk (*) as a linguistic disruption of sorts that shifts the meaning of words to intentionally reference from a trans perspective (e.g., trans*form). In most cases, it is not used after the word "trans" as is becoming common in many spaces (see this article for an explanation of the etymology and meaning of trans*), except when directly cited or is part of an already published piece. This is to honor the ongoing discussions and tensions amongst trans communities regarding the use/misuse of the asterisk. See, the following three articles to learn about some of these discussions and tensions: by Julia Serano, by the Trans Student Educational Resources, and by Practical Androgyny.